Moist Vessel: Lower Decks S01 E04

Episode four has the most going on visually - yet somehow manages to be the weakest yet from Lower Decks. 

With the inclusion of a second California Class ship, the USS Merced (this one's got a blue stripe) and a suitably grumpy Tellarite captain the stage is well set as the two ships take a battered old generation ship under tow. On the ship the crew are mummified in stasis with a biomolecular agent as their cargo that turns lifeless matter into organic items.

Meanwhile we have Tendi looking to assist one of her fellow crewmembers "ascend" to a higher plane of existence. Finally, finally, finally she gets something decent to do although her viewpoint as the newbee has quickly dissipated. It's an ok storyline that starts in the expected fumbled Lower Decks way but ends sort of where you hope it to. Tendi is the most excitable of the quartet of lead characters and this certainly comes across in her adventure here which takes place around the incident involving the generation ship. Problem is here, I wasn't really that invested in the lieutenant who wanted to ascend and is the motivation for Tendi to want to help him really in keeping with Starfleet? 

This is perhaps the biggest bugbear I have with Moist Vessel. Tendi is helping but certainly not helping in any way with the end result more of a fluke than actual ascendancy in motion and it's less than perfect. Looping it around the bio-effects of the generation ship's unstable cargo do make it slightly more farcical only added to by Boimler's green-eyed monster of jealousy mist that leads him to pour hot coffee on Ransom's lap mid-red alert. 

On the other side we have Mariner being "forcefully" promoted, enraging Boimler with jealousy that he has been overlooked when the rule-flouting Beckett gets a rung up the ladder - again.

Of course it's part of a masterplan from Captain Freeman who is Mariner's mother in order to either discipline her or get her daughter off the ship quickly. Of course, as you might expect, this all backfires with the mother/daughter combination being behind the eventual episode resolution after both Starfleet vessels are enveloped by material from the generation ship.

Mariner continues to be the most interesting and apparently easiest character to write for onLower Decks, being the anti-establishment individual who has to play good as part of the senor staff. The poker game is a classic and it'll be hard not to be thinking of those moments on The Next Generation and how everyone seemed to "play nice". 

Mariner's more interesting character depth keeps Moist Vessel at least bouyant for half an hour and the more engaging of the two plot threads. It's a real chance for us to experience the heart of Starfleet that clearly beats within her when the time calls for it, proving her to be one of the more intelligent and adept members of the Cerritos crew...however there's that chip on her shoulder that keeps dragging her back to the lower decks.

Moist Vessel is ok but does take a step too far for me personally where the American comedy element (that's still not making me crease up) topped out into utter incompetence in some respects and made me lose some worth and respect for Tendi and especially Boimler in an uncharacteristic showing against his by-the-book approach that would surely have seen him court-martialled and thrown out of the service. 

Also a redeeming point - the Tellarite Captain Durango is a gem of a role not only being grumpy but barkingly competitive leading to the terraforming/bio-matter incident through his own short-sightedness and self-importance...just as you would expect from a Tellarite and nuanced up to 11 for good measure!

What's your verdict on episode three?

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